 Capturing cultural change: approaches for attending to the creation and transformation of cultural worldsTricia Niesz Chapter 7 in Research Handbook on the Anthropology of Education, 2026, pp 57-67 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: When cultural anthropology's central concept, culture, underwent critique and transformation in the late 1970s, scholarship in the anthropology of education evolved as well. Yet, although the theoretical innovations of this era pushed the diachrony of cultural worlds to the foreground, most anthropological studies of education have remained synchronic. In this chapter, I advocate embracing the historical dimension in our work by attending to the creation and transformation of the cultural worlds we enter as researchers. Toward this end, I survey theoretical and methodological approaches valuable for attending to the historical dynamism of cultural processes. Specifically, I discuss how practice theory, theories of cultural production, conceptualizations of figured worlds, and historical methods position us to understand and investigate cultural change. As cultural worlds provide not only context but also resources and constraints for those navigating identity, power, and practice in education, understanding how those worlds develop and change over time ought to be central to the work of anthropologists of education. Keywords: Practice theory; Cultural production; Temporality; History; Cultural worlds; Cultural change (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23336_7 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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